Early Post Mortem of Santa Ana Council and SAUSD School Board Races

It’s going to be a long night, but the returns thus far indicate that Team Pulido has prevailed in Santa Ana.  The worst performance by a member of Team Pulido is that of Councilman Carlos Bustamante, my opponent.  He got less votes than the rest of them.  The best performance was turned in by Claudia Alvarez, who faced an opponent who did not have a ballot designation or statement.

The numbers will continue to shift tonight as the rest of the votes are counted.  However, it appears that our friend Jim Walker is falling short of victory in Ward 1, against Councilman Vince Sarmiento.  Shame on those who did not help their friend Walker.  LIke Evangeline Gawronski, two years ago, Walker looks like he could have won if he had been supported by the neighborhood activists he has helped so often.

In my ward, Bustamante has a comfortable lead at the moment, although he is getting less than 50% of the vote.  That could change I suppose, but I have quite a hurdle to overcome as there are so many challengers in this race.  Ana Rebecca Valencia Verdin did the job that Bustamante asked her to do.  She split the vote – so her guy Bustamante could prevail.  And in a surprise, deranged former Orange School Board Member Steve Rocco did quite well – based on his name.  Many voters apparently voted for him as he is not Latino.

In the Mayor’s race, Pulido is leading.  But he is not doing as well as Alvarez.  She has 6,000 more votes than he does – and George Collins has almost 5,000 so far.  You do the math.  Collins split the vote in Michele Martinez’ favor.  But not enough.  She will get more votes tonight, but probably not enough to win.  She ran a great campaign, as did George, but Pulido will likely survive to ruin our city for two more years.

There are as of right now only 26 precincts left to count.  It seems impossible to win at this point.

Over in the SAUSD School Board races, it looks like the voters were fooled again as they are going with Rob Richardson and Jose Hernandez, the horrible incumbents.  But at least one of the candidates I endorsed, Valerie Amezcua, is holding her own in third place.

Gregory Barraza did the job that Miguel Pulido tasked him with.  He diluted the Latino vote and pushed down some far better candidates.

Roman Reyna ran a good campaign and he could still win, but right now he is behind Amezcua.  And poor Mike Gonzalez got wiped out!

UPDATE:

Congratulations to Valerie Amezcua on her victory in her SAUSD School Board race!  I am sorry to see the incumbents win, but at least we got Valerie on the board too.

It looks like Bustamante stayed under 50%, but he did prevail.  In fact all of Team Pulido did.  That bodes ill for our city.  But the people had choices this year and while the challengers were underfunded, Team Pulido had to spend a fortune, and Jim Walker got a lot of votes in his race against Vince Sarmiento.

It is hard to believe that over 5,000 people voted for the deranged Steve Rocco.  On the one hand he is now retired from politics, so I guess their is a silver lining.  But that just tells you that quite a few people were not going to vote for a Latino, period.

And I have to assume that many Latino voters, once again, did not vote.  The numbers certainly bear that out.  So once more we are stuck with the worst City Council in Orange County. I look forward to revealing just how awful they are here at the Orange Juice.

Thanks again to all those who fought the good fight with us.


About Admin

"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.